Dirty South

27

Four hours after the police left, Teddy called to let me know he’d come up with a way to pay Cash. Just like that. He was at the airport about to fly to Los Angeles to strike a deal with Universal for distributing the final Dio album. He didn’t want to do it but he said the offer was his only option. While we were on the phone, I tried to talk to him about Malcolm and why he should try to work with Jay Medeaux at NOPD. But he didn’t want to, instead asked me to leave town with ALIAS. He needed me to keep the kid out of New Orleans until peace was made with Cash.

“I’m not worried about ALIAS,” I said. “I’m worried about you, man.”

“I have a dozen of the baddest motherfuckers in the Ward lookin’ out for me,” he said. “What’s a white boy from Alabama gonna add to the mix?”

I told him about the man from last night.

“Some ratty-clothes fucker?” Teddy asked. “Man, that some ole homeless dude lookin’ for a place to squat and a sandwich.”

I loaded up my army duffel bag, called JoJo in Clarksdale, picked up ALIAS, and headed the Gray Ghost west on I-10. We drove north on 55, passing supersize truck stops, Cracker Barrels, and rest areas. We stopped for gas outside Kentwood but kept rolling for a few more hours. ALIAS slept. I listened to a new album by Jim Dickinson and some old Ry Cooder sound tracks.

At about 3 P.M., ALIAS and I pulled off at an exit in Vaiden, Mississippi, for supplies and some chicken-fried steak at the All-American Diner. Eighteen-wheelers blew diesel fumes from their exhaust. Fords and Chevys nestled by a bank of glass windows, their owners inside shoveling in chicken-fried steak and fries.

“What the hell is that shit?”

“It’s steak.”

“Then why they call it chicken?”

“They don’t call it chicken, man,” I said to my young road Jedi. “They fry it like a chicken.”

“That sounds nasty.”

“Wait till you try it,” I said. “Best in the state.”

I imagined ALIAS’s do-rag and thick platinum chains would draw some stares from the truckers who were hunkered over their lunch platters. But I needed some good, warm food and often stopped here on my way to Clarksdale.

I let Annie make a deposit on the grass and left her in the shaded car with the windows down. ALIAS mumbled and planted his feet on the ground outside the truck. He yawned tall and hard and motioned at the windows of the restaurant.

“You takin’ me to a Klan meeting, Old School?”

“Bring your sheet?”

“Come on, man,” he said. He looked at all the spindly pine trees in the forest across the road and pickup trucks in the lot. The air was silent except for the roaring of semis every ten seconds on the interstate.

Two black truckers in tall cowboy hats – toothpicks wandering from the sides of their mouths – pushed the front doors open and gave long looks at ALIAS in his baggy FUBU jersey and low-ridin’ jeans.

I ordered coffee from a teenage waitress who looked as if she’d just woken up and the world held a million possibilities. Her smile plastered and hard, eyes so wide open that they gave me a headache. ALIAS got a Coke.

“That was some fucked-up shit, man, in New Orleans,” ALIAS said, playing games with his fingers. They fought one another as he refused to look me in the eye. “Don’t want to be part of that.”

“I’m sorry about Malcolm.”

ALIAS shrugged. “Nigga made his play.”

“That’s hard.”

“What ain’t?”

He looked away from me for a moment and I nodded.

“You want me to drive?” he asked.

“No one else drives the Ghost.”

“That ole piece of shit?” he asked. “I got some silk underwear that cost more money.”

“Probably runs better too.”

The waitress came back and I asked for the Texas-size chicken-fried steak and ALIAS ordered a cheeseburger and fries.

“You want to tell me more about your buddy Cash?” I asked.

“Cash ain’t my buddy.”

“Teddy heard he was at your place the other night,” I said. “He sent some folks by to find you and they said you were outside smokin’ it up with Cash.”

He didn’t say anything.

We stared out into the parking lot at the trucks until the food arrived.

The country-fried steak sat brown and covered in white peppery gravy in front of me. ALIAS ate a few fries and looked around for a ketchup bottle. There wasn’t one, and he tried to show he was so damned interested in finding the bottle that he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“You made up your mind?”

“Man, Cash want me to join his label,” he said. “You know that? Said I’m a punk for runnin’ to the Ninth Ward when you got a straight-up Calliope brother with L.A. connections.”

I watched his face. He blew out his breath and rubbed the top of his head. He’d quit eating his food.

“So you’re gonna stay with Teddy?”

“I’m gonna do whatever ALIAS want to do.”

“That have anything to do with Tavarius Stovall?”

“Man.”

“You know that your name comes from a plantation where we’re headed.”

“Slave name.”

“Sort of,” I said. “But someone in your family came from Clarksdale. I’d bet money.”

“My people come from Mississippi?”

“Where did you think they came from?”

“All I know is Calliope.”

“Maybe we can stop by,” I said. “Always good for the soul to know your roots.”

He looked up at me, in the eyes, and smiled. “’Cept when those roots are rotten.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Just repeatin’ the words my grandmamma tole me,” he said. “She said my mamma was a drug addict and a whore. Said she was sick in the head and I was just like her.”

The waitress came back and leveled a ketchup bottle on the table. She smiled at us and looked pretty even though she had crooked yellowed teeth and brown frizzy hair.

“I saw your video on BET,” I said. “You got talent.”

“You watch BET?”

“Frequently,” I said.

“Which one you see?”

“I don’t know. You were driving a Mercedes in the Quarter with three girls in bikinis. You looked pissed off talking on that cell phone.”

ALIAS laughed. “So where you takin’ me?” he asked, happy with the ketchup and tapping the bottle.

“I told you, we’re going to stay a few days with some friends of mine.”

“That old dude.”

“Yeah, that old dude,” I said, cutting into the steak.

“What he to you?” he said. “Some kin?”

“He and his wife took me in when no one else wanted me,” I said.

I watched ALIAS in his wrinkled shirt. His face covered in oil and sweat. Then I looked at two truckers by a window drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying a moment of silence. I could not see much beyond the road.